[kurthr]

I don't remember the effective social movements and resulting changes in society you describe coming from threats of violence (in the US). Whether it was suffrage or labor rights, the greatest power for violence was always with the status quo and not with those protesting. Often violence has brought about change in perception opposite to its intent. This was true in civil rights, gay rights, antiwar, and labor movements.

So I disagree that prohibition of violent public speech is an aspirational privilege otherwise necessary for justice and progress. A terrorist Ghandi wouldn't have been as effective against the British Raj (who could and did kill indiscriminately).

If you were talking about private speech (not threats), I would have some more understanding.

[red-iron-pine]

The only reason you have a 40 hour workday are due to constant rioting and unrest. these strikes weren't just unhappy people with picket signs, they literally "called in the Pinkertons" to beat them into submission, and most of the strikes going back to the 1800s had some component of violence.

Apropos of the date, the Pullman Strikes are the reason we have Labor Day as a national holiday. 70 people died during that strike and around 60 more were seriously wounded. Violence was common during strikes in the 1800s, but Pullman was especially chaotic -- but par for the course as global labor struggles went.

[sangnoir]

> I don't remember the effective social movements and resulting changes in society you describe coming from threats of violence (in the US)

I can think of 2.

The end of the reconstruction period (slash-start-of-Jim-Crow) was brought about by violence (and threats of violence). The newly-formed KKK and fellow travellers successfully used lynchings to deter the formerly enslaved from participating in the political process (as candidates and voters), which was the status quo.

The Stonewall riots were were a another one - I'm certain there are more examples in between those 2.

[ywvcbk]

> end of the reconstruction period

To be fair civil rights and relative racial equality was imposed by an (effectively) foreign army of occupation.

That army leaving is what led to Jim Crow, there was hardly any meaningful bottom-top societal change since the local Republican governments could have never survived without significant external support anyway.

KKK/etc. were effectively an unofficial enforcement branch / citizen militia of the local elites and state governments.

IMHO the situation was a bit like the war in Afghanistan (just with a slightly narrower cultural gap). Women rights could only survive as long as the US/NATO force were there to impose them and they reverted to the status quo as soon as the foreign militaries left.

[ClumsyPilot]

> don't remember the effective social movements and resulting changes in society you describe coming from threats of violence (in the US).

I mean there was the whole civil war thing…

If a movement has millions of people, possibility of violence is implied if you piss then off enough.

[kurthr]

Agreed, but the US Civil war wasn't started over mean tweets or nasty letters. There were armies and battlefields. The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States wasn't threatening individual lives, but simply said that some states need not respect the federal union.

Also, that threat of violence didn't lead to the success of the Confederacy, but to its destruction.